Yahoo.com Change Throws Some Marketers a Curve Ball

Last weekend, Yahoo.com made a security change to their domain that affects anyone sending email with the From Address of @yahoo.com that isn’t using Yahoo!’s servers to send the mail. Any email marketer that uses @yahoo.com as their From Address may have noticed their delivery rates plunge.

Yahoo.com made a change to their domain level policy called a DMARC record. DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance. DMARC combines existing technologies like SPF and DKIM, but goes a step further to help prevent spoofing and phishing attacks. Yahoo! users were under attack and the attackers were attempting to compromise end users’ Yahoo! accounts. Yahoo! implemented this DMARC policy to help protect their users from these attacks.

As a result of this change, any mail being sent with the From Address of @yahoo.com that isn’t sent out of Yahoo! mail servers is likely to bounce. This includes any mailing sent from a third party email service provider.

To avoid being impacted by this change when sending email marketing communications, make sure you are not using a From Address of @yahoo.com. It is best practice to use a From Address of your corporate domain (@yourcompany.com for example). If that is not possible, use a different free webmail provider altogether (gmail.com or hotmail.com are excellent alternatives). If you send with a From Address of @yahoo.com, your email will not be delivered successfully and you will notice a high bounce rate.